Really basic Blender video editing screencast: Part 2

A few weeks back I did my first Blender screencast showing how to do a few simple things with video using Blender. In that one we covered editing and joining clips, fading between clips and exporting our video. In this second screencast I cover how to fade into and out to black, add a simple title screen and how to add a soundtrack to your video.

It’s all pretty simple once you get the hang of it, and keep in mind that I’m very much a newbie at Blender so expect a few flubs. In fact there’s a slight train wreck about 3/4 of the way through when I forgot how to create a new node for editing sound curves. I didn’t edit it out simply because I couldn’t be bothered and I also thought what the heck.. if I’m learning this application, then why pretend to know every little thing about what I’m doing when I clearly don’t. Feel free to shake your head in disgust when you watch that part. ;)

Also, as you might have seen in this post, unlike me, Troy knows what the hell he’s doing with Blender. Two good things have come of this, we’re discussing what other in-depth tutorials might be worthwhile when it comes to introducing people to video editing in Blender and even better yet, he asked me how I screencast. I think it would be great if someone who really knows this stuff was able to do a little teaching. :)

Even though we’ve started this discussion I still thought it would be worthwhile to throw out this second screencast because I think once people get over the initial hurdle and actually produce something (anything) with Blender it only gives them more confidence to spur them on and learn more. That’s how I am anyway. I like to try challenging things, but it’s damn nice to actually achieve something worthwhile quickly to maintain and build my enthusiasm.

Note: If you change the file extension on the above link from ‘.html’ to ‘.flv’ you can download the FLV file directly and watch it offline in something like VLC if you’d prefer. This goes for the first Blender screencast as well.

Another fine tutorial for those wanting to experience video work in Blender. Great job. ;)

It occurred to me recently that there is at least another way to add fade-ins and fade-outs. Just like you showed your viewers how to use the IPO editor to fade out a sound track, you can use the same technique at the beginning of the video and apply identical IPO curves to both the audio and video track.

For instance, place a node at 0frames@0.0 and a second node at 30frames@1.0. That gives you a 1 second fade in. Apply the opposite at the end of the movie. Play around with it. You’ll be surprised that the fade is just as smooth as the gamma cross effect.

A great thing about the IPO editor is that it can offer one away to keep the time line a little cleaner by reducing the amount of effects placed on it. Of course the end result is no different than adding effects…just an alternative way to do it. ;)

Another great screencast. It works great even with blender 2.45 (extremely minor diffs). I stumbled upon a couple of things while making a video that you might find useful. After selecting a clip or effect, hitting the N key brings up a transparent properties window for that object. (I needed to use something like that to change the color of the color generator in 2.45). Also, hitting the space bar brings up the Add menu.

I shot a bunch of videos and stills this past weekend and wanted to put them into a video, which led me to a Google search and to your site. I had heard that Blender had a good video editor built in, but, as others have said, is a rather daunting application to master “cold turkey”. I simply refuse to succumb to the “you can’t do that in Linux” mindset and video editing is surely one of the last remaining strong holds. Thanks so much for this series and please keep them coming.

Also, I found another interesting tutorial that has some good info in it. You can find it here:

Great screencast! I just started to play with blender, and the user interface is so much better than Cinelerra or Kino. Did you notice btw that you can do the same with video tracks as with the audio? I mean to fade in and out the contents with that curves. I guess you can do the very same thing in many different ways.

Anyway, I would have two questions if you do not mind.

1. My problem with blender is that it does not want to render my footage for some reason. I do exaclty the same as you show on the screencast (except using 720×576″25 as using a PAL video footage) and when I click on ANIM basically nothing happens. Sometimes it brings up a black window with an error dialogue box that I cannot read as it is out of the window – just can see: “Err” and the rest is not seen. Do you have any clue where to start figuring out what’s wrong?

2. The second question is what screencast software you were using? Was it recordMyDesktop?

1. I’m not sure what’s going wrong. What video and audio formats are you choosing for the rendering output. Have you tried different ones? I personally set it on ffmpeg and this brings up the video and audio tabs for the settings. Personally I find the best results when I choose xvid for the video. You should try running Blender from the terminal. This way when it fails to render the movie it may spit out some clues as to what the problem is. You’ll also find tremendously helpful people over in the blenderartists.org forum. I’ve posted quite a few messages over there when I’ve been stuck on something and I always seem to get a quick and *very* useful answer.

2. I use RecordMyDesktop from the command line. We use it for our inkscape screencasts over at screencasters.heathenx.org. I’m used to it and find that the quality and stability is good. Are you doing some screencasting yourself?

Thanks for the advice with the rendering and with the forum, I will have a try and will ask these problems over there.

With the screencast question, I never done it to be honest, but I am going to do a tutorial on PIC microcontrollers for the very beginners, and as part of the video would be screencast style as there is a development tool for that chip. Basically I could do it with the camera as well, however, I think the quality is better if I use RecordMyDesktop.

I will have a look at your inkscape screencasts – have to learn that too :-)

Great job with your video. I haven’t had a chance to come up with a 3rd Blender video yet, but I’m definitely going to do it once I find the time. I’ve really barely scratched the surface with the first two. I’m glad you found them useful.

Also glad that to hear you like our Inkscape videos. Good to know we’re helping people.

Yes.. position the cursor where you want to split the video and then hit the “K” key. If you want to split the audio and video tracks at the same point then make sure they’re both selected (by right-clicking) before hitting ‘K’. Whatever is selected will get cut at that point. Very easy.

There are quite a few little tricks and tips. I really have to do another screencast on this just to show that stuff.

First thing that kept me away from blender was that many people bloged that to get started with Blender the learning curve is steep… I no more agree with that… I got started in less than an hour… all i did is watch this 2 screencasts + one question which now you answered!

1. I have some problems like that on my work machine (which is on XP). You should register at blenderartists.org and ask the question there. They are MUCH more knowledgable than me. It’s been a great source of help for me over there.

2. To reverse an entire clip, right-click the clip, go to the scene panel (F10) at the bottom and select the sequence buttons. On the filter panel you should see a “Flip Time” button. This should reverse that clip.

3. You can do slow motion and I think fast motion and reverse using the ipo curves. I haven’t done too much of that, but try this for starters: Right-click the clip, hit shift-A to bring up the menu and add a ‘speed control’ to the clip and place that on the time line. Then, when the speed control is selected, go to the sequencer buttons again and make sure ‘ipo is velocity’ is checked. Then create an ipo curve to do the slomo. Be careful with this because I’m still not sure about how it treats the clip on the timeline relative to other clips. There is also a way to reverse things too this way. I haven’t done sped-up video this way, but I think you might have to select the ‘ipo value runs from..’ button to do this. I’ll have to play with this to be any more help. Sorry.

And I’m looking for those screencasts too.. they must be lying around here somewhere! :) Don’t worry, Blender isn’t off my radar. I just have to find the time to get organized about it. I still think they’ll be valuable. For me, if not for others.

Btw – killer rock star photos. I’d like to know how you got the vertical sheen.. was it just using motion blurs or some other method? I’ve tried that effect on some of my stuff but was never quite satisfied I was doing it the best way.

reverse video in blender. v249.2
it doesnt work using scenes directly.
If u want to reverse a scene make a render first
import the render like a movie
Go to Scene Menu(F10)
Click on Sequencer button
Under “Filter Panel” click “Flip Time”